Loopy rules and my love affair with golf
Rev Donald Francis Gavan and the provisional ball
By Terrance Gavan
“Golf is the closest game to the game we call life. You get bad breaks from good shots; you get good breaks from bad shots - but you have to play the ball where it lies.”
Golfing legend Bobby Jones said that. Bobby Jones was a pretty good golfer.
Now I agree with most of the things the good Mr. Jones had to say about golf. But he’s dead wrong here.
You don’t have to play the ball where it lies.
There are always extenuating circumstances.
In Canada we have spring and fall rules. We have snow rules.
Rules that fly in the face of the Jones dictum. Rules that allow us to move the ball, willy-nilly, and chock a block, dependant on temperature fluctuations, poor grass, bad course maintenance, and the seasonal flux and flow.
On some courses in the Canadian Rockies we have the Grizzly Bear Conditional Rule.
The Grizzly Bear Provisional Drop: Rule 10 – Section VII (part d) states:
“If your ball comes to rest on the big toe of a 900 kilogram male Grizzly, just risen from winter’s slumber, you may of course take a drop and provisional lie exactly 2.5 club lengths from said Grizzly’s right toe. The ball will be played to the right, left or behind the point of progress and not closer to the hole. If the bear eats the ball, you may drop another without penalty. You may not advance the ball closer to the pin, even if the bear is very angry and threatening mayhem. You are golfers not wimps. Suck it up, you whiny pink-plaid-wearing pussies.”
When I golf in the Rockies I also like to travel with a high powered rifle loaded with hypodermic darts laced with about 2000 milligrams of Demerol.
After popping one or two Demerols into the Grizzly’s rump, it’s wise to prod his inert form with your longest club – the Driver – before measuring those 2.5 club lengths. Drop the ball in a place that ensures a good sight line to the resting Grizzly, just so an errant snore or twitch won’t interfere with your backswing.
You should of course note that most golf courses frown upon the carrying of high-powered firearms, so I like to plop the rifle in my bag covered with one of those cool Tiger head covers. I remove my one iron to make room for the Winchester.
Everyone knows even God can’t hit a one iron. Well, he can, but it’s always a wide ducking hook. Then he throws a huge hissy fit and Haliburton gets hit with another bloody snowstorm in April, or a dormant volcano suddenly gurgles to life in Alaska.
I learned golf from my uncle, the Reverend Donald Francis Gavan.
He taught me the value of the provisional ball, spring, summer and autumn rules, and the Footjoy wedge.
People have told me that I don’t really play golf at all.
“You can’t tee up a ball in the fairway for chrissakes!” yells my good friend Mortimer Gas, who is a scratch golfer with a golfing library that required the construction of a 500 square foot addition to his country home. “Who taught you to play golf anyway?” Mortimer is a bit of a pedant when it comes to golf.
“The Reverend Donald Francis Gavan,” I tell Mortimer. “And yes you can tee up a ball in the fairway, if your ball just happens to land on a piece of crappy green-tinged concrete masquerading as a lush fairway. It’s the ugly summer heat and poor grass management rule, and besides, I’m not good with the three wood off a flat lie.”
Mortimer also gets quite perturbed at my habit of playing three balls off every tee.
“You can’t just play three balls for the hell of it!” screams Mortimer. “Who taught you to play golf?”
Mortimer is really an easy-going guy, but get him on a patch of green fairway and he just loses it.
“They’re called provisional balls, Mortimer. And it was Father Gavan. Remember?”
“Geez, I don’t want to hear that name again,” screams Mortimer. “And by definition you play a provisional ball when you think your first ball is lost, not whenever you feel like it. And how do we know which ball you’re scoring?”
And here’s where you can really drive a playing partner nuts.
“Well, Mortimer, what’s a score anyway, in the grand scheme of Zen and green acres? But since you’re asking, I always count the lowest of the three-ball parlay. I’m eccentric, but I’m not crazy.”
Mortimer Gas will then turn the color of Tiger Wood’s final round red jersey.
I have been, of late, experimenting with the Happy Gilmour running drive, a method that requires a 10 yard running start from the back of the teebox to the ball.
“That’s downright embarrassing, and it looks awful,” sighs the Gas man.
I smile at Mortimer.
“Reverend Donald Francis Gavan hit his drives lefty and cross-handed, his irons righty and he putted ambidextrous, and he often quoted Sam Snead: ‘Nobody asked how you looked, just what you shot,’ said slammin Sammy.”
“Okay,” says Mortimer, smiling, “what did you shoot yesterday?”
“Accounting for three provisionals, and best ball parlay, and allowing for the two brand new Srixons I found in the woods on 12, I was about a three under 68.”
“You don’t even mark your scorecard!” screams Mortimer.
“Right on. Father gavan never kept score,” I reply.
Mortimer’s face assumes the glowering countenance of Jack Nicholson in the final act of The Shining, and he’s reaching for a club/weapon from his bag.
I gallop quickly toward my third ball on the first tee in my best Happy Gilmour and clobber a beautiful screaming faded rainbow that travels at least 310 yards out into the lake.
“Lucky thing I still have those two provisional balls in the fairway, eh Mortimer?” I shout over my shoulder in full sprint mode.
I look back at Mortimer Gas who is chasing me down the fairway, a hybrid club raised menacingly over his head. I’m running, golf bag jangling on my shoulder, and laughing. And I’m thinking: “Geez, what a great game. God I love golf.”
I’m sure that Fr. Donald Francis is watching from heavenly perch, with new partner, St Peter, from the back nine of some cloudy country club, where Amen Corner is a mindset and not a nickname.
And I’m sure that, like me, he’s smiling.
“See that Peter. Look at my nephew run. I taught him everything he knows. Now look out, third ball comin’ at ya’ … Fore!”
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